Friday, August 18, 2006

Hey Hey, We're the Monkees

I spent last weekend in Orlando, to visit my family and attend the wedding of a childhood friend.
The last of our group of Monkees, Jesse, got married. We grew up in a wonderful, close neighborhood, and there was a family with three boys that lived across the street from us. It was great, Shannon and I got to kind of know what it was like to have brothers, and the guys kind of got to know what it was like to have sisters. Here's a picture of the 5 Monkees (not 4 like the TV show) all growed up:



Left to Right: Nate Kline, Me, Jess Kline, Shannon, and Aaron Kline.

It's so funny to think that we are all married now, Aaron and Shannon and I (almost) are parents, and we still can hang out just like we used to.
Okay, so the Monkees reference. (I'm planning on linking to a wikipedia article, but I can't get wikipedia to load...)
When we were little (elementary age) the Monkees came on Nickelodeon every day after school. The boys would come over and we would watch the show together. Eventually, we decided that we wanted to be the Monkees. Never mind the fact that the Monkees were a band of 4 guys, the 5 of us we determined. We sang along in the garage ('cuz that's where all bands practice) to our LPs and later, cassettes, and pretended to play the instruments we built out of cardboard boxes. Aaron was Davy Jones, I was the invented twin sister of Aaron/Davy, Nate was Mike "Wool Hat" Nesmith, Shannon was a girl Peter Tork, and Jess was Mickey Dolenz.

We played a lot of different things in our garage. Mom always kept the freezer stocked with popsicles, and we played marathons of Monopoly and Clue. We built forts with all the boxes Mom's work stuff was delivered in, and worked on the tree fort in the big tree behind the boys' house. As we got older, we moved indoors when our NES came home, and worked collaboratively to beat Super Mario 3 one summer.

Anyway, I'll add more photos as soon as Blogger cooperates with me. My sister emailed me pictures from the wedding and more of the cutest Jr. Monkee, my nephew Dylan.


3 comments:

Pat Rutherford said...

You never told me you liked the Monkees. That was my favorite group as a teenager. My bedroom walls and ceiling were papered with pictures of the Monkees. Of course, Davy Jones was my all-time favorite. He was so cute!You guys were watching the re-runs of the shows I watched every afternoon after school along with "Where The Action Is" with Paul Revere and the Raiders.

Pat Rutherford said...

Forgot to add. You are looking very pretty. Pregnancy definitely agrees with you.

Danielle said...

It is so neat to hear stories like that of lifelong frienships and garge adventures. Did you ever do the monkey walk together? My mom taught me that one. Oh and is that a recent picture? You are one hot pregnant lady girly!